


Restoring Balance

by Gryffens



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Before the casino heist, F/M, Fix-It, Forgiveness, M/M, Magical Maguyvering, post story and song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-24 04:29:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14347980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gryffens/pseuds/Gryffens
Summary: An eye. A memory. A face. Twenty years of life.Defeating the Hunger doesn't restore everything that the crew of the Starblaster has lost. That's what powerful, untested ritual magic is for. What could possibly go wrong?





	1. Davenport, Lup, Barry

Davenport made sure that his travel never took him away from his crew for too long. The love he felt for them wouldn’t allow anything else, even when he had to push through the unpleasant and awkward moments. Like visiting people that had seen him act like a brain-damaged valet. Or the person who had turned him into a brain-damaged valet.

At this point, about six months after the Day of Story and Song, the person he felt most comfortable with was Lup. Although he would never say it out loud, he thought that it was because they had both been.. interrupted, for the past twelve years. Prevented by circumstance from growing and changing, even though their circumstances were wildly different. In many ways, Lup was still the closest to the person he remembered from their days on the Starblaster.

So when Lup came to him, resplendent in her new body, and said, “Barry’s keeping something from me,” he knew he had to act.

***

The detective work that followed was fairly elementary. Davenport made idle conversation with the two of them, watching for twitches and tells. It had something to do with liches, and also bonds. Not unexpected, given Barry’s areas of expertise. But what Davenport didn’t expect was the slight jump when he mentioned delivering a package of rare books the last time he visited Lucretia.

_Interesting._

Lucretia was working to rebuild the Bureau of Balance as the Bureau of Benevolence. If she was helping Barry, then their project was something to do with righting a past wrong. Either it was something that the relics had done to the world, or something Lucretia had done to the Starblaster crew - or both.

Over dinner with Lup, Barry, Taako and Kravitz, Davenport steered the conversation towards the events of the last twelve years. Ostensibly he was filling in the gaps in his knowledge, but at the same time he was watching Barry. Who got a distant look in his eye any time someone mentioned the Animus Bell. _Busted._

“I’ve got to say, Kravitz,” Davenport said, “I’m glad to hear that there’s someone out there taking care of liches - present company excluded of course. In one hundred years of travelling, Edward and Lydia are the only thing I’ve seen that have come close to the Hunger in sheer evil.” He sipped his wine. Barry’s face in that moment was the last piece of the puzzle he needed.

“I only wish I could have discovered them sooner,” Kravitz said politely.

Davenport shook his head. “There was nothing you could do, not with one-seventh of the Light of Creation hiding them from you. All we can do now is try to heal the scars left behind.” He can see from the muscles in Taako’s forearm that he’s gripping Kravitz’s hand, hard, under the table. Meanwhile, Barry has no idea what to do with his hands. It was time to go in for the kill. “Isn’t that right, _Barrold_?”

The table was silent. “...Yes?” Barry said.

“I suppose it’s lucky that you’ve got Lucretia helping you,” Davenport said. “She has the time and resources to research the parts that you still haven’t figured out yet.”

“I, what,” Barry said. “She told you?”

“No she didn’t,” Davenport said calmly. “But you did, just now.”

A beat of stunned silence. Then Lup turned to Davenport and said, “Fuck you’re good.”

“I know,” he said, and took another sip of his wine.

“What the fuck is going on?” Taako demanded.

* * *

What was going on, was this.

Her darling husband, Barold J. Bluejeans, had entered into a scheme with one Madame Lucretia, to try to restore the attributes that had been sacrificed to the liches Edward and Lydia during their sick games.

“Why didn’t you just _tell_ me, dummy,” she said.

“I thought you’d tell me it was too soon to be experimenting with powerful ritual magics,” Barry admitted.

Lup thought for a second. “Barry,” she said.

“Yes dear?”

“It’s too soon to be experimenting with powerful ritual magics.”

“I know, it’s just...” He struggled to find the words, then gave up with a sigh.

Unexpectedly, it was Kravitz who interjected. “What was done with the Animus Bell was unnatural and unjust. You feel like you need to put it right.”

“Hell yeah,” Taako said. “Taako needs to be a flip wizard again.”

Lup’s mind instantly went to Taako’s glamour, applied every hour without fail. And sure, it was a first level spell and Taako had spell slots to burn, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, apart from one brief moment during the _literal apocalypse_ , her brother was refusing to acknowledge that his face had changed, which meant that he was still in Stage 1 of Taako’s 5 Stages of Grieving*. She knew what she had to do.

“Amendment,” she said. “It’s too soon to be experimenting with powerful ritual magics without involving your brilliant wife. Dust off the books, honey, we’re going to experiment town.”

***

It wasn’t quite that simple, of course. What they were doing was a bizarre mish-mash of so many areas of technology and magic that Lup’s head hurts by the end of the first week. Barry approached the problem like it was sort of anti-necromancy, and she frequently heard him muttering things like ‘spiritual opposite of a pentagram’ and ‘planar balance’ when he was supposed to be sleeping. Davenport attacked the problem from a technological point of view, building something that he called a ‘bond manipulator’ as a source of power. Soon enough Merle got roped in to provide his knowledge of Parley, which would hopefully create a safe space within the ritual for the magic to work.

Of course, all of this required supplies, some of which had never been discovered or manufactured on this plane before. Magnus and Taako teamed up to scour Faerûn rare materials. Unfortunately the best source of information about this was still Lucretia, and Taako still refused to interact with her in any way, leaving Magnus to awkwardly play messenger.

“How long do you think it will last?” Magnus asked Lup after one particularly annoying mission. Magnus had come down with laryngitis and Taako had refused to use the Stone of Farspeech when they needed directions from Lucretia, which had led to three cold, smelly nights in a swamp that could have been avoided.

Lup thought for a bit. “You know how our home and everyone on it was consumed by the Hunger, and for a hundred years we thought that we would never see it again?”

“Yes?” Magnus replied.

“If we ever reinvent the ability to travel between planar systems, the first thing I’m going to do is get my fifteen dollars back from Greg _fucking_ Grimaldis. Holding grudges is what we do, Magnus. Always has been.”

He sighed. “I know, it’s just… she’s our sister, you know?”

Lup smiled sadly. “I know. And that’s why I can work with her. But to Taako, that doesn’t make what she did better. It makes it far, far worse.”

***

Eventually, though, the seven of them prevailed, as they had so many times in the past. Davenport produced his device, a twisting sculpture of glass and wire that looked like an upended chandelier and held seven candles. Kravitz had been excluded from the ritual because Barry couldn’t work out how to account for somebody whose body was technically a construct - apparently tube-grown was fine, though. Angus had been forbidden from joining and had sulked for days, which Lup found hilarious because apparently his version of sulking was to be even more scrupulously polite to everyone. So it was just the original crew, reunited once more, now with an extra heaping of awkwardness.

They took their places in the room, careful not to scuff the hundreds of tiny runes drawn onto the floor. “Is everyone ready?” Davenport asked. They chorused their assent.

Barry smiled. “Take it away love,” he said.

“I thought you’d never ask,” said Lup, spinning up seven miniature fireballs on her fingers and blasting them towards the candles with a flash of blue-white light.

* * *

When Barry’s vision cleared, they weren’t in the room where the ritual was cast. This room was bigger, he thought, although it was hard to tell because the walls seemed to be glowing softly, and when he squinted and tried to focus on them he couldn’t. The seven of them were sitting on plush red cushions on the floor. They were arranged in a circle, close enough that if he leaned and stretched he could touch any one of the others. In front of every person were stacks of ivory coins and a plain wooden bowl.

“Is this what was supposed to happen?” Magnus asked.

“I don’t… hmm” said Barry. “Nobody go anywhere for now, let’s work this out.” Best case scenario had always been that all stolen traits were instantly returned, but Barry had never seriously believed that was an option. Now it was their job to figure this out.

Lucretia picked up her stacks of coins and examined them. “One each of a raven and an eye. Three hands, fifteen hearts and five stars.”

“What about the hourglasses?” Lup said. “I’ve got, like, twenty hourglasses. And a moon.”

A quick conversation confirmed that everyone had slightly different sets of coins. “I think each symbol represents one of the aspects we’re dealing with here,” Barry said.

“Well, I think I know what it means that everyone has an eye and I don’t,” grumbled Merle.

“Agreed,” said Davenport, in his ‘I’m choosing to ignore your emotions and get to the point’ voice. Barry was all too familiar with it. “The coins represent the… commodities, that were traded in Wonderland. But if that’s the case, how do we get Merle another eye coin? There’s nothing else in the room.”

Taako snorted, bitterly. “That’s because nothing in life is free, homie.”

“Ah!” Barry smacked himself on the forehead. “I’m so sorry everyone. Stupid Barry!” He quickly looked through his coins to confirm his suspicions, and sure enough he was missing the moon as well, but had the hourglasses.

“Chill, babe,” Lup said. “Mind catching the rest of us up?”

“I think.. that without the power of a grand relic, we can’t recreate the things that were lost in Wonderland.” Barry said. “No Light of Creation means no new eyes.”

“So that’s it? We failed?” Magnus asked, incredulously.

Barry hesitated for a second, turning the eye coin over in his hand. No _new_ eyes… Then he shrugged, and said, “Only one way to find out,” and tossed the coin into the bowl in front of Merle.

There was a flash of golden light and a sound like a chiming bell. Everyone shook their head and blinked trying to clear the afterimage from their vision. Barry felt a weird and horrible sensation - or was it lack of sensation? - that confirmed even before he heard Lup gasp that his theory had been right.

The coin in Merle’s bowl had disappeared.

Merle, who had ripped off his eyepiece and was blinking in shock, had two eyes.

And Barry had one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Taako's Five Stages of Grieving, as observed by Lup:
> 
> Stage 1 - Denial  
> Stage 2 - Aggressively rubbing his flaws in other people’s faces and daring them to comment  
> Stage 3 - Pretending to be sensitive about the subject and then mocking people when they fall for it  
> Stage 4 - ???  
> Stage 5 - Acceptance


	2. Merle, Magnus, Lucretia

After they had all recovered from the shock of Barry’s impromptu experiment, they let him explain what he’d deduced.

“The Light of Creation in the Animus Bell had the ability to take your sacrifice and convert it to an energy that the liches could feed off. I was hoping that our bonds would do the same thing here, but apparently the ritual just wasn’t powerful enough. What we can do, though, is redistribute things amongst the seven of us.”

Merle listened, he really did, but he was having a hard time concentrating with the world having suddenly gained depth and detail that he’d forgotten he was missing. Plus, the new eye was watering like a bitch.

“Oh no,” he said suddenly. “Please tell me they match. Please tell me that I don’t literally have _one of Barry’s eyes_.”

Magnus looked at him. “Nah, you’re good.”

“Thank Pan for that.”

“Hey,” said Barry mildly.

“Ahem,” Davenport said. “Now that we know how this works, should we continue? If we were to restore Merle’s dark vision, for example, that would entail Lucretia, Taako, Lup or I losing it, which is not exactly what we set out to do.”

Merle waved his hand. “Forget about the dark vision, folks. I’m a beach dwarf, I don’t need it anyway.”

“Are you sure?” Lup asked. “Because once this body dies I get a construct from the Raven Queen, and I’m pretty sure it’ll come with all the bells and whistles.”

Taako smirked and opened his mouth, but without even looking Lup reached over and smacked him before he could get the words out. “Please don’t say anything about Kravitz’s whistle, babe.”

“Eww,” Merle and Magnus said in unison.

“It’s a shame that we’re not able to split up the dark vision ability between two people,” Barry mused.

“What, like some sort of low-light vision?” Magnus said. “That’s crazy.”

“I think we should keep going,” Lucretia blurted out. Everybody looked at her. “Of course, nobody is obligated to give anything up, but there’s still good to be done here.”

Merle looked sharply at Lucretia. One hundred years of adventuring together made you pretty good at reading each other's’ faces, and he knew that right now he was giving her his ‘don’t do anything stupid’ look. Lucy responded with a flash of her ‘I’m choosing to ignore your advice and do what I think is right’ look. Merle was all too familiar with it.

“For example,” Lucretia said, “I’m pretty sure that I don’t need this as much as Magnus does.” And she held up the coin with the raven on it.

“Yeah, I’ve been wondering about that one,” Magnus said “Is it something to do with the Raven Queen? Why would everyone else have it and not me? I didn’t wager anything to do with death…” he trailed off, growing uncomfortable with the looks of pity he was getting. Forget reading faces, Magnus was so transparent that Merle could practically read his mind.

“Well,” Lucretia said. “If there’s anyone in this room that deserves to give up a memory, it’s me.” And she flicked her raven coin into Magnus’ bowl.

And Merle watched as Magnus remembered…

... remembered Raven’s Roost, but that wasn’t right because he’d never forgotten…

... but he had forgotten, hadn’t he, that Raven’s Roost had been _destroyed_ …

... that Julia wasn’t just dead, that she’d been _murdered_ …

... by _Governor fuckin’ Kalen_.

“Son of a bitch,” Magnus said.

“He remembers,” Taako announced to no-one in particular. “Sorry we haven’t smoked Kalen yet, buddy. Tell you what, next school holidays, why don’t we take Angus on a ‘hunt down a mass-murdering fuckhead’ vaycay, he’d love that.”

“Yeah, no, uh…” Magnus said, not really following. “Lucretia, are you all right?”

She cocked her head, looking confused. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Merle felt queasy. This was only a fraction of what she’d done to all of them, but it seemed so wrong. But not as wrong as turning their captain into a Pokemon, he supposed. And hey, it definitely reduced the pressure on him and Taako as the designated dispensers of vigilante justice.

“Don’t worry about it, Lucy,” Merle said. “Magnus and me, we’re all sorted.”

* * *

Magnus was glad when the conversation moved on from him and Lucretia. He would need time to really think about what he’d rediscovered, to sort out all of his emotions… but not yet. Right now he would distract himself with the thing he considered most important - helping his friends. Him and Merle were done, so that meant...

“All right, it’s Taako Time,” Taako said, rubbing his hands together. “What’ve we got for cha’boy?”

“Hands, stars, hourglasses and hearts,” Barry recited. “You lost dexterity and health, didn’t you?”

“Hands and hearts, then,” Davenport said, nodding to himself.

After a bit of wrangling, Taako accepted one hand coin each from Lup, Lucretia and Merle. Magnus put in five heart tokens, and everybody else contributed two. Magnus had wanted to put in more, but Taako insisted that he still intended to use Magnus as a meat shield from time to time and that he needed to stay in shape. Every time Lucretia dropped a coin into his bowl Taako looked studiously away, refusing to acknowledge it. Magnus didn’t like how it made everyone else look sad, but after his talk with Lup he didn’t think anything he could say would help.

“And, um, now the stars,” Magnus said nervously. Taako had been so steadfast in covering up his appearance since the day the Hunger came that Magnus didn’t think anyone really wanted to bring it up, but somebody had to - so he rushed in. “It’s just, the stars have been confusing me. I can count how many eyes someone has, but how do you count beauty? I mean, eye of the beholder and all that.”

Lup unexpectedly snort-laughed. “Would you like me to explain, brother dear?” she asked.

“Like there’s anything I can say to stop you, sister-mine,” Taako replied, his voice dripping with insincere sweetness.

“It’s simple really,” she said. “The stars represent beauty as seen and judged _by Taako_ , where twenty is our original face, and one is, well…”

All eyes fall on Merle.

“Hey!” he protested. “I ought to punch you all in the face more often, we’ll see who’s the prettiest then!”

“So wait,” Barry said. “Four for me, one for Merle, six for Lucretia, eight for Magnus and two for Davenport. That’s what you think of us?”

“Hah!,” Magnus said. “I knew you thought my guns were sweet!”

Davenport suddenly gave a dry little laugh. “But we’re missing the best part here. Taako, how many coins are there between the five of us?”

There was a pregnant pause. “Nineteen,” Taako reluctantly answered, studying his nails.

“So you’re saying that, according to Taako, if we were to add up all the physical beauty of all the non-elves on the Starblaster, it’s still not quite as good as a single elf?” Magnus asked. Then he stopped and thought about what he’s just said. “Oh wait, it’s Taako. Of course that’s how it works.”

“Yeah, that tracks,” said Barry.

“He just doesn’t know rugged handsomeness when he sees it,” grumbled Merle. “Plus he’s biased against the short races.”

“Of course, none of this helps us work out how we’re going to fix this,” Davenport said.

“It’s just a face,” Taako said, as at the same time Lucretia says “I’m putting mine in.”

There was a second of awkward silence. Magnus had almost forgotten about this particular brand of Taako silence. It was at once accusatory and dismissive, like it was saying ‘I’m choosing to ignore you until you beg forgiveness for your transgressions, peons’. Magnus was all too familiar with it.

Then Taako said, “You do what you gotta do, Madame Director”. He still refused to meet her eyes.

“Thanks, Luce,” Lup said softly.

Wordlessly Lucretia scooped up her six star coins and tipped her hand into Taako’s bowl. When the flashing lights cleared, Lucretia was.. plain. There was no other way to describe it. The colour of her eyes had faded, and the wrinkles that had previously looked distinguished now just made her look tired.

Taako dropped his glamour and conjured a mirror, giving himself a critical look.

Magnus tried to remember what Taako’s face had looked like before Lucretia had made the transfer, but he had worn the glamour so consistently that it was almost impossible to recall. What was easy to see was that he still didn’t look exactly like Lup, and Magnus was struck once again by how _wrong_ it was that the twins should have different faces.

“Hey, buddy,” he said, “I’m out of the dating game for good, so have mine, yeah? Gotta get you as close to Lup as possible, even if my stupid human face can only get you so far.”

“Slow down, big boy,” Lup said. “If the goal is for us look the same again, there’s a simpler solution.”

“Lup, no,” Taako said, grabbing for her hand, but he was too slow. A stack of seven coins disappeared into his bowl, and suddenly they were both up to thirteen - not as beautiful as they used to be, but still better looking than just about every human ever born.

Taako glared at Lup. Lup glared back. Magnus saw their mirror-image expressions and wanted to cheer.

“OK, but can I still give you at least one each?” he asked coaxingly.

“Fine!” Taako yelled, throwing his hand up. “Apparently I get no say in any of this, so go right ahead!”

“Thank you,” Magnus said haughtily, and slid the coins into Takko’s and Lup’s bowls. He checked himself out in the mirror once Taako was done with it and, honestly, he couldn’t see any difference. Obliviousness wins the day again!

What he wasn’t oblivious too was the small smile slipping through the mask of Taako’s annoyance, or the look of relief on Lucretia’s face.

* * *

“Well,” Lucretia took a deep breath. “I suppose that means we’re done here.”

“Um, no?” Magnus said. “We still have the hourglass coins. And I might not be the sharpest tool on the block (“Not how the saying goes, dumbass” muttered Taako), but I’m pretty sure that’s the twenty years you lost when you went to Wonderland before the BOB.”

“Exactly,” Lucretia said. “I went there, because it was part of my plan, and I- I can’t ask any of you to pay for my mistakes. You’ve paid enough already. You’ve _all_ paid enough already.”

This was it. The reason she had sought out Barry, the reason she had spent countless nights pouring over rare tomes and scrolls, refusing to sleep until her work was done. She had taken so much from them all. Whatever guilt Barry felt over creating the Animus Bell was nothing compared to how she felt, sending them into that trap with their minds still crippled. At least Barry had been able to get them out of there, in the end. Now she had given everything to Taako that she could, had seen Merle’s eye restored (and Magnus’... something, her mind whispered) she could at least cross one crime off her list. That’s all she wanted, to make things right.

“If you don’t feel like you can ask, then don’t” Davenport said gently. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t give.”

“But, I…”

“Lucretia. Close your eyes,” he said. “That’s an order from your captain.”

Lucretia looked around, helplessly. Then taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes, feeling like she was waiting for an axe to fall.

There are the sounds of rustling and the chiming of bells. Lucretia counted as the bells pealed one, two, three… all the way up to twelve. And then at the end, when she was just about to open her eyes, a last, thirteenth chime. Thirteen years of her life, restored just like that - over a decade longer to spend running the Bureau of Benevolence. Over a decade more time with this brilliant, fractious family. “Thank you,” she whispered, and opened her eyes.

They probably intended for the whole process to stay a secret. But they had forgotten how keen here eyes were, how eagerly her brain picked out the details. Davenport had sorted his coins into two neat piles of ten, and the right pile was now missing two. Merle and Magnus were both down one (Magnus had the fewest years of any of them, and Merle had the kids to think of, she quickly reasoned). Lup and Barry had given four each, which was probably because their bodies’ lifespan was only loosely tied to their continued existence. Which only left…

Taako.

_The thirteenth chime._

Taako who hated her, who wouldn’t look or speak to her, who had been seconds away from murdering her when he found out everything she’d done to him. Taako, who had cooked her favourite meal whenever the plane had the ingredients, who had put on a fashion show clad in nothing but body paint during a cycle when they hadn’t laughed in months. The elf who she had mind-wiped, erasing the memory of the one person he loved and relied on above all others, leaving him vulnerable to the manipulations of a sociopathic poisoner. The brother who had listened to her stories of home so often that she felt her family lived on, a little, in him. Taako.

Taako had given up a year of his life for her.

Lucretia burst into tears.


	3. Taako

The aftermath of the ritual was… weird.

Taako was a flip wizard again. He was seventy percent as hot as he used to be, and he looked like Lup again, thank fuck. Magnus could go on his own revenge quest (although Taako was pretty sure he’d have to come along anyway). Merle had two eyes. Barry only had one, although he was already talking about the crazy things he could artifice up to replace it, so even that was a win. Lucretia was younger and less hot, but whatever, it’s not like humans could ever be that hot anyway.

(Magnus took of his shirt and did some flexes as soon as they had dispelled the ritual. Taako would never admit that even if he was a six over all, those guns were definitely a ten.)

If it were up to Taako, the team would have chalked this one up as a win and moved on. Instead it seemed like everyone was still having feelings. And speaking as the new-old Taako, the one who had experienced one hundred years of family and togetherness, there were still too many feelings. If he were still the version of Taako that had worked for the Bureau of Balance he would have moved to fantasy-Siberia to get away from all this. Pre-BOB Taako would have faked his own death first.

Davenport had given him a manly shoulder clap and said “I’m proud of you,” before he left to get back to his ship. Merle had casually mentioned that he was going to get “Lucy” to take a break and come visit Mavis and Mookie, did everyone else want to come too? Magnus had pulled Merle and Taako into a big weepy hug and thanked them for promising to get revenge, even though they hadn’t actually done anything. Lup and Barry kept shooting each other conspiratorial looks and sappy grins when they thought people weren’t looking. Frankly, it was disgusting.

Taako thought that the perfect plan was to ditch these losers and go hang out with his boyfriend. Who sniffed him once and said, “Taako, why are you closer to death today than you were yesterday?”

It was not the reception Taako had hoped for. More importantly, though, sniffing? “I’m sorry,” he said, “Your reaper-senses work by _smell_? Is that what you’re doing whenever you’re on patrol, just wandering around Faerûn hoping to catch a whiff of necromancy?”

“Taako, I’m serious,” Kravitz said tightly. There were lines of tension running through his body. This wasn’t Kravitz’s fun exasperated face, this was his concerned-and-ready-for-action face.

Taako sighed. “The ritual didn’t work exactly how we planned. It could only redistribute things, not create them. So Merle’s back up to two eyes, but Barry is a cyclops now. And Magnus can remember Raven’s Roost now, and Lup and I are identical again, and can I stop talking about this now?”

“What do you think?” Kravitz asked dryly.

Which yeah, he should have called that one.

Kravitz frowned. “So you gave someone a year of your life? Taako, that sounds dangerously close to necromancy. Extending someone’s natural lifespan…”

“It was Lucretia, okay?” Taako snapped. “She lost twenty years in Wonderland the first time, and she’s still down seven, so if you want to take it up with anyone take it up with Edward and Lydia, but you _can’t_ , ‘cause we already kicked their _fucking asses_.” And then he left and went to sit on the roof, because fuck this bullshit.

Eventually Angus came up and sat beside him. Together they watched as the wind tossed around stray leaves and the sun crept towards the horizon.

“Tracked me down, huh kid?” Taako said eventually.

“Of course, sir” Angus said, smiling.

“So what now?”

“Well,” Angus said, “Normally after tracking a subject, the next step would be an interrogation. But in this case I got most of the information I needed from the others, and I think I deduced the rest, so I suppose we just… “chill”, for now.” The dork actually did the air quotes too.

Taako reached out and gave Angus a short but intense hug. “See Ango, this is why you’re my favourite.” And they sat and watched the sun go down.

***

When they came in, Lup had made dinner. Kravitz gave Taako a relieved smile but didn’t say anything, just gestured to Taako’s usual chair. It was just the twins, their significant others and Angus, and Barry took the lead in conversation, quizzing Angus about his time at Lucas’ patently inferior school of magic. He had dug up an eyepatch from somewhere, which looked totally incongruous on his kind, unassuming face, but he didn’t seem bothered at all.

After they had finished eating Taako twitched at Lup, who raised an eyebrow at Barry, who hustled Kravitz and Angus away to start sketching out ideas for his new eye. Taako and Lup set their mage hands to doing the dishes and Taako conjured a mirror. Together they scrutinised their faces.

“It’ll do, I suppose,” Taako conceded.

“You’re looking at this all wrong, Koko,” said Lup. “It’s not what you’ve got, it’s how you work it.”

“Counter argument - Merle,” Taako said. “No amount of work could rescue that face.”

Lup laughed. “You really are biased against the short ones. Davenport is way cuter than you gave him credit for.” Taako gagged, and banished the mirror. The dishes were almost done.

“I don’t forgive her, you know,” he said abruptly.

Lup shook her head. “Fuck, Taako, I was in an umbrella for twelve years. I don’t even know what forgiveness is supposed to look like for something like that.”

Wait, what? Taako was confused.

“I just know what I want my life to look like from now on,” Lup continued. “And you helped with that today, so, thank you.”

As usual, Taako chose to tuck that sentiment away to think about later. Lup knew what he was like, she’d understand. “Well lah-di-dah, somebody’s Zen as shit,” he said instead.

Lup laughed. “And don’t you forget it. Now go let Kravitz apologise for pushing, and you can apologise for being a little bitch, and we can both try to talk my husband out of building an eye that glows blue in the presence of gerblins.”

“Oh shit, that’s exactly what that nerd is gonna do.” Taako said, horrified. “Quickly, Lulu, let’s go stop him before it’s too late.”

And so they did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first fic I've ever written that's more than a oneshot. I guess TAZ is just an extremely inspiring canon :) Thanks to all of my lovely reviewers, it's definitely kept me really pumped up while I've finished this story.
> 
> Edit: holy smokes, it's fanart! This is actually the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. [smallerthanzero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallerthanzero/pseuds/smallerthanzero) has done two versions of the scene with Taako and Angus: [here](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/426155351365124097/439938914980200459/ficart_RestoringBalance_Gryffens.png?width=401&height=269) and [here](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/426155351365124097/439939016092155904/ficart_RestoringBalance_Gryffens_2.png?width=317&height=301)


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